Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."

- Matthew 6:19-24

As we continue through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus delves into many subjects. Each elaborates on the previous reading, and leads us into His teachings. We began with The Beatitudes (Part 1), and then to You are the salt of the earth - You are the light of the world, Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven, First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift, You have heard that it was said to those of old . . . , Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect and Your Father who sees in secret, who is in the secret place. In yesterday's reading, Jesus gave us what we know as The Lord's Prayer, teaching us how to pray, after teaching us to pray in the secret place, our inner chamber, to our Father who sees in secret. See Our Father in heaven - The Lord's Prayer.

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal." We remember that Jesus has been teaching about spiritual disciplines -- alms-giving, prayer, and fasting. In each case He has emphasized the private nature of each, not for show among other men, but for Our Father who sees in secret, and is in the secret place. In this way, He has said, "your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly." (See Your Father who sees in secret, who is in the secret place.) What Jesus states here follows logically the teachings on spiritual disciplines done "in secret." Where is our treasure? For what do we practice such spiritual disciplines? We have observed that Jesus has been preaching a kind of exchange: instead of working for "worldly" praise, we earn the praise of God and we are rewarded openly by God for that which is done "in secret" and in the inner life, so to speak. Here, He takes that a step further. Where is our emphasis? For what do we labor and toil? What are the real things of value that we work for first above all things? This is a continuation of the thoughts on this "exchange" of one kingdom for another, one way of being in the world for another, as He has taught us to pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Let us consider the importance of this teaching. What do we love most? What is our treasure? In the reading cited above, about going to our room for prayer, we discussed the word Jesus used for "room." In the Greek, it's a word for an inner storage chamber, where valuables are kept. This is rooted to the sense of the heart, and what we keep there, what we store there, especially in Jesus' language that He uses in His teaching and preaching. Here, He speaks of the things we dote on, what we love the most. Which values or valuables do we put first? That's where our heart is -- the place where we must go to Our Father in prayer. This greatly emphasizes the importance of our choices, what we choose to love the most and put first. It defines who we are.

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" We return to Jesus' words about plucking our our right eye if it offends us: "If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell." Jesus once again is speaking about how we see things, how we look at the world and our lives, what is our point of view. Looking at things, in this sense, is a way of speaking about the things we really want and desire -- a continuation of His discourse on what we put first, what we love the most, where our treasure is. If we don't set our eye in the right place, toward the light, how dark will our darkness be? Earlier, He also preached that we, as His disciples, are to be the light of the world. The lamp of our eye must be lit with the light of God, the fire of God. But it all starts with how we see, how we look at things, what our eye most desires.

"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." Here, He brings it all down to a stark choice: again, what do we love most? What do we put first? My study bible points out that it comes down to a question of freedom or slavery: if we put the material things first as that which we love most, we will be a slave to this "worldly" life. Instead, "we give our lives and our whole selves to God;" that is, to Our Father, who knows the things we have need of even before we pray, as we read in yesterday's reading. It is not that we live out of the world, without good things, but rather what we put first and what we love first. It is all a question of choosing loyalty and a master, and there is no middle ground here. Jesus makes that starkly clear, that this is the nature of our lives in the world. We must choose who and what we serve with our whole lives, what we value the most.

My study bible has a note, which I'll reprint: "As slaves serving two masters, people attempt to maintain an attachment both to earthly and to heavenly things. But this is impossible, for both demand full allegiance. Jesus calls mammon a master, not because it is by nature evil, but because of the absolute and wretched servility it extracts." So, let us consider attachment, and what that means. Attachment is the word used for what we treasure most, and in this choice there is no room for both. It's either one or the other. When we seek God as master, and the heavenly treasures we can store in our heart, then all things in the world become a part of a sacramental life. That is, our worldly lives become a part of a whole life of spiritual blessedness, one inside the other, so to speak. But without this choice, we become slaves to the material -- to the things that will vanish. As Jesus puts it so vividly, "where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal." We can live a life in the world, full of good things created by God, made complete in the love for the spiritual reality in which everything is grounded. It just depends on what we put first, what we love most. What's your choice? What fills your heart with treasure that lasts through all things? What illuminates and gives value to the rest of your life?